Page 7 of Account of some of the proceedings of the legislatures of the states of Kentucky and New Hampshire, --1828 -- in relation to the people called Shakers

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publications sent abroad into the world we believed them
to be true.
Under these considerations and with these views we
continued with the society for some years, and by an active
and laborious life, faithfully discharged what we believed
to be our duty, by a willing conformity to all the rules and
orders of practical life given to us by our leaders, and by
these means secured to ourselves much satisfaction, until
our leaders began to deviate from those principles on which
we had joined them. Your petitioners do further testify,
that for no other cause than a private expression of certain
opinions relative to moral sentiment, which we most con-
scientiously believed to be not only true, but the strongest
basis of pure morality, that some of us were publicly
anathematized, grievously misrepresented and most per-
emptorily ordered to leave the society or make a recanta-
tion of our sentiments; and (to heighten the injustice of
their oppression) sentiments too that would not-lead to the
violation of one moral precept contained in the doctrines
of the society, but remove many manifest errors of which
the society [i. e. the flesh] complained. The oppressive
dealings towards some, and the severe threats of like abu-
sive treatment of others, rendered us so uncomfortable
that we could no longer enjoy satisfaction in the society,
and were almost forced to leave the place without any
compensation for our long and faithful services.
These, with many grievances too tedious to mention,
have created a determination in some of us to seek redress
at law; but we have been told by our counsellors that as
the society of Shakers are a body without any Act of
Incorporation, and as many of them stand in a very singu-
lar relation to each other in consequence of a form of cove-
nant established among them, redress at law could not
easily be obtained, without first, some provision being
made, by an Act of your honorable body.